Indon bird flu fears take flight

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THE lure of free entertainment on a sunny Sunday afternoon drew
hundreds to a field near the Javanese village of Babat two months
ago, to witness the first mass cull of pigs infected with deadly
bird flu.

Adults and children milled about, watching animals being
slaughtered, thrown into a pit and burnt with no sign of public
safety precautions.

Indonesian Agriculture Minister Anton Apriantono shouted
frantically to department staff to find if it was safe to remove
his white mask to answer questions.

"Don't blame me if you get bird flu because you don't wear a
mask," he warned reporters. "This is very dangerous, you know, as
the virus can be transmitted through the air."

Mr Apriantono was soon struggling to explain why only 31 pigs
and 40 ducks from Tangerang region, bordering densely populated
Jakarta, were being culled, instead of the promised hundreds of
infected pigs, not to mention thousands of nearby chickens.

Large piggeries near the outbreak had shipped stock away and 140
pigs marked for culling had been rescued by their owners. The
minister said he accepted their stance.

"We only culled the infected animals as we do not have the money
to carry out a mass culling," Mr Apriantono said.

"We found that only a few pigs and ducks have been
infected."

Days before, an auditor who lived nearby, Iwan Rapei, and his
two daughters had died with symptoms of heavy pneumonia. Tests
confirmed Mr Rapei carried the bird flu virus.

In April, tests at local piggeries had uncovered bird flu
infections, but no cull eventuated. To control the disease, the
World Health Organisation requires pigs and birds within three
kilometres of an outbreak to be slaughtered.

This week it emerged that several of the 17 (and rising) people
admitted to hospital with bird flu symptoms in the latest outbreak
are from Tangerang or nearby areas of Jakarta.

The botched cull is symptomatic of Indonesia's inability to
prevent a pandemic that could kill millions in the region.

WHO regional spokesman Peter Cordingly said Indonesia was now
the bird flu hot spot, and country representative Georg Peterson
called it the weak link in global efforts to avert a pandemic.

Although WHO makes understanding noises about Indonesia's
difficulties, other experts are seething. "They have spent a year
saying they have it under control. This is bullshit," a senior
official said. "Indonesia hasn't got it under control and the
longer they go on not culling, the bigger the problem is going to
be."

Mr Cordingly said WHO had known "for some time the H5N1 virus is
entrenched in Indonesian poultry populations. The situation is
growing worse, we have to expect there will be more human
cases."

He believed the nightmare scenario  the virus mutating to
transmit easily between people  had yet to appear. "There's
no conclusive evidence that what's happening in Indonesia in the
last couple of weeks is human-to-human transmission.

"That said, each time a human being becomes infected, we worry,
because one of the scenarios for this pandemic to start is if one
person has the avian influenza virus in his body at the same time
as the normal flu virus, there is the possibility of genetic
exchange between the two viruses. So every human case has us
worried."

The deaths of the three family members in Tangerang might have
involved "within-family transmission", Dr Peterson said.

Only one set of test results had been received in the latest
outbreak, from a 37-year-old woman who died a fortnight ago,
suggesting the virus had not yet mutated.

"It seems like a virus that has gone directly from birds, (that
is) reassuring for all of us," Dr Peterson said.

Less reassuring is the Government response. Despite tests
showing more than half of its exotic birds carried the bird flu
virus, Jakarta's Ragunan Zoo was kept open on Sunday for thousands
of visitors, including hundreds of expatriates on a fun run for
charity. Several of those admitted to hospital since then were zoo
visitors.

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari first denied the problem and
the possibility of human transmission, then stated it was
inevitable and Indonesia was in the grip of an epidemic.

She later reneged, claiming the situation could potentially
become an epidemic and calling for increased "alertness" .

But Mrs Supari's issuing of an "extraordinary" bird flu alert
has been attacked by other ministers as it could harm tourism and
investment.

UN calls for urgent slaughter of poultry

INDONESIA should immediately slaughter poultry in areas affected by
bird flu to help stop it developing into a human pandemic, the
United Nations said yesterday.

"In view of the worrying situation, it is necessary for the
Government to improve its virus control policies and strategies,"
Joseph Domenech, the head veterinarian for the UN's Food and
Agriculture Agency, said in a statement.

The Government, accused of responding slowly to the outbreak,
has in recent days stepped up efforts to curtail its spread.